The days in each city were full. I could drink, have sex with people I picked up or with any prostitute whose body took my fancy, visit galleries, queue for cheap seats to the theater or opera, or merely read and walk. In the former East Berlin all I did was walk and take photographs. In a bar in Paris, I met a young Algerian guy who modeled occasionally. The male models didn’t earn anything like as much as the girls, and most of them had other jobs. My friend got me a catwalk show during Fashion Week, and I took my turn parading on the narrow aisle, as the flashbulbs exploded and the unprepossessing journalists scribbled. Was it the clothes or really the bodies they were looking at? Backstage, it was a chaos of semi-naked girls and boys, dressers, the designer, and numerous assistants.

I enjoyed all of it, and after chatting with the designer, whom I’d known slightly in my previous body, I was offered a job in one of his shops, with the prospect of becoming a buyer, which I declined. I did ask him, though, whether, by any chance, as I was a “student,” he’d read any of “my”—Adam’s—books or seen “my” plays or films. If he had, he couldn’t remember. He didn’t have time for cultural frivolity. Making a decent pair of trousers was more important. He did say he liked “me”—Adam—though he had found me shy at times. He said, to my surprise, that he envied the fact that women were attracted to me.

The following day, my new catwalk acquaintance thought it would be a good idea to take me shopping. I had told him I had a small inheritance to blow, and he knew where to shop. In our new gear we went to bars suitable for looking at others as we enjoyed them looking at us—those, that is, who didn’t regard us dark-skinners with fear and contempt.